Lines & schedules

Making a line

A line is a named, coloured list of stops in order. To make one: create it, click stations on the map in the order you want them served, and press Enter when done. The map draws the route, and the line inspector lists the stops with the distance along the line.

A few things the panel will do for you:

• Loop the line — right-click a circle to loop back there, so the route becomes a circle rather than a there-and-back.
• Sort stops — puts the stops in the order that gives the shortest route, useful after editing.
• Add every station it passes — instead of clicking each one.
• Show related lines — highlights every other line sharing track with this one.

And a few things it will refuse to do, with a reason:

Message	Meaning
No track joins A and B	The stations are not connected by track the line can use
Trains can't get from A to B without turning back at a junction	The route needs a reversal the junction does not allow
The stops are too close together to reach it	Not enough distance to accelerate and brake
Track this line ran on is gone	You deleted track under a running line

The schedule panel

The panel has one block per demand level: high, medium and low. Each block has two numbers that are really one number:

• Trains — how many vehicles the line runs during that demand level.
• Headway — the time between departures, derived from the trains and the lap time.

The relationship is the one every transit planner uses:

trains ≈ round trip time ÷ headway

If a round trip takes 60 minutes and you want a train every 10 minutes, you need 6 trains. The panel shows both the lap (one way) and the round trip, and explains the split: half the vehicles each way. It will also tell you when a headway is impossible because of a track limit — in which case the trains past that point wait at the ends of the line, out of service.

Because the steppers are per demand level, a line can run 8 trains in the peak and 4 at midday. That is usually the single biggest cost saving available to you: most lines do not need their peak fleet all day.

Speed, dwell and why the lap time is what it is

The lap time is built from the route, the vehicles and the track:

• Top speed — normal trains run up to 160 km/h; high-speed trains up to 320 km/h on high-speed track, but only 160 km/h on normal track.
• Track and curves — normal track, tram track, street running, curves and crossovers each impose their own lower limit. The line panel names the one that is holding the line back.
• Dwell at stops — every stop costs time. The panel reports the total dwell, and it is the reason stations every 400 m make a line slow even if the track is fast.

The inspector's speed section answers "why is this line slow?" directly, with the specific cause and the speed being imposed. That is worth checking before you buy faster vehicles.

Reading the line's numbers

Figure	What it tells you
Riders	People carried per day on the line
Average load	Load across the whole line and the whole day — the profitability signal
Profit	Fares minus running costs for the line
Riders left at platform	Demand you are turning away
Trains leaving full	How often the service is at crush capacity

The pair to watch together is left behind and average load. Left behind with a high average load means the line is genuinely short of capacity. Left behind with a low average load means the capacity is in the wrong place — usually one crowded segment or one crowded period, not the whole line.

Line improvements

The inspector's improvement section bundles the fixes that need construction, and prices them as a blueprint before you commit:

Improvement	What it fixes
Expand platforms and trains	Stations too short for the train length you want
Extra cars	Capacity, quoted per car
Passing tracks	A slow train holding up faster ones behind it
Parking at the end stations	Access at the outer ends, where driving to the station competes

Each is charged once and then shows up in upkeep, like any other construction. The panel will tell you when there is nothing to do — "every station already has parking" — rather than selling you a duplicate.

Copying a schedule

Schedules can be copied between lines: copy from one, paste into another. The paste carries the train counts, headways, cars and whether the line is high-speed. If the target line has a platform too short for the copied train length, the game keeps the target line's shorter length and tells you which station is the limit.

This is the fastest way to standardise a network: get one line's peak service right, then paste it onto the lines that should match.

A working method

1. Build the route, then look at the lap time before touching the schedule.
2. Pick a headway you would be happy to wait for — 10 minutes in a city is a reasonable target.
3. Set the peak trains to round trip ÷ headway, rounded up.
4. Run a day, then read average load and left behind.
5. Cut the off-peak periods to whatever keeps the average load respectable.
6. If the peak is still full, check the capacity list before buying more trains: the limit may be a platform or a junction, not the fleet.